Michelle Wu sworn in as Boston’s first woman mayor

Michelle Wu, a Democrat, was sworn in on Tuesday as Boston‘s first woman and person of colour elected mayor in the city’s long political history. The swearing-in ceremony of the city’s first Asian American mayor came two weeks after she won the city’s mayoral election.

The election of Wu marked a tectonic political shift in Boston, a state that had only elected white men as mayor before her. 

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Wu, 36, takes over for a fellow Democrat — former acting Mayor Kim Janey — who was Boston’s first woman and first Black resident to serve in, but who was not elected to, the top post, according to Associated Press.

Following her inauguration, Wu will have the difficult challenge of implementing a flurry of ambitious policy ideas that served as the campaign’s backbone.

Wu has committed to exploring rent stabilisation or rent control to combat rising housing costs that have driven some previous inhabitants out of the city. The fact that Massachusetts voters narrowly adopted a ballot issue outlawing rent control statewide in 1994 is the largest roadblock to that idea.

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Wu, whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan, grew up in Chicago and moved to Boston to attend Harvard University and Harvard Law School.

Wu, who has two small children, is Boston’s third mayor this year.

“I know that Boston is in good hands and I am so proud to call you Madam mayor,” Janey said moments before Wu was sworn in.

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Before becoming mayor, Janey served as president of the Boston City Council.

When the city’s last elected mayor, Democrat Marty Walsh, stepped down this year to become U.S. Secretary of Labor under President Joe Biden, she took over as interim mayor. Janey took the oath of office on March 24.

With inputs from the Associated Press